9 New Books That Will Help You Break Your Reading Slump

A reading slump is just about the worst thing that can happen to a book-lover, but if you've slacked off and let your TBR pile grow larger, there's no reason to fear. All it takes is the right book to break your reading slump, and I have nine great contenders for you below.

The nine books on this list were all published in the last year or so, and most of them have made headlines for their upcoming adaptations, awards nominations, and other credits. Check out my picks for the books that will break your reading slump:

'Little Fires Everywhere' by Celeste Ng

Little Fires Everywhere opens with a mysterious house fire in a picture-perfect Cleveland suburb, then backs up to wind through the weeks that led up to the blaze, which include the intrusion of Mia and Pearl — an artist and her daughter — upon the 'burb's cookie-cutter world.

'The Radium Girls' by Kate Moore

For 25 years in the early 20th century, watchmakers in the U.S. employed girls and young women to color watch faces and dials with glow-in-the-dark paint. The workers were told to lick their paintbrushes into a fine point, and that ingesting the paint was safe. In reality, they were sucking radioactive material into their bones with every stroke.

'The Belles' by Dhonielle Clayton

Six 16-year-old sisters known collectively as "the Belles" have been born to a mission: restore beauty to the ugly, grayed-out land of Orléans. Their magic makes them valuable in a world that prizes aesthetic pleasures, but as one of the sisters, Camellia, rises through Orléans' social ranks, she discovers that the Belles' magical powers might not be so lovely after all.

'Red Clocks' by Leni Zumas

After the passage of the Personhood Amendment outlaws abortion and in-vitro fertilization treatments, three Oregon women find themselves staring down the issue from different sides when a fourth, a homeopathic healer named Gin, is put on trial for assisting women whom the law and the medical establishment have failed.

'An American Marriage' by Tayari Jones

Celestial and Roy have barely had time to enjoy being married before he is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. His early release brings new challenges, however, as Celestial and Roy's best man, Andre, have grown close in the five years he has been gone.

'Priestdaddy' by Patricia Lockwood

In this memoir of an almost-too-weird-to-be-true childhood, Patricia Lockwood returns to her Midwestern upbringing when a financial problem forces her to return to her parents' home, bringing her husband along for the ride.

'The Neighborhood' by Mario Vargas Llosa

Set in Peru in the 1990s, this thriller (written by a Nobel Laureate) revels in the chaotic aftermath of a tabloid magazine editor's murder, when two prominent couples, whose lives are already hopelessly intertwined, are thrust into the spotlight of suspicion.